Mestre Josias

Mestre Josias da Silva was a pioneering figure in the development of capoeira in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro. He learned capoeira from Mestre Paulo Gomes, who had moved to São João de Meriti in the 1960s after training under Mestre Artur Emídio in Rio de Janeiro. This placed Josias in a distinguished lineage: Neném → Paizinho → Artur Emídio → Paulo Gomes → Josias da Silva.

Josias established the Associação de Capoeira Josias da Silva, which operated in the municipalities of Nova Iguaçu and Duque de Caxias in the Baixada Fluminense. Along with Mestre Barbosa, he was one of the pioneer mestres who ran the first formal capoeira academies in Duque de Caxias.

In 1973, a young Cinézio Feliciano Peçanha—who would become the internationally renowned Mestre Cobra Mansa—began learning capoeira with Josias and Raimundo in Duque de Caxias. The following year, Cobra Mansa would encounter Mestre Moraes at the Roda do Central do Brasil and follow a path into Capoeira Angola, but his foundation began in the academies of these Baixada Fluminense pioneers.

The young capoeiristas training at the academies of Josias and Barbosa would eventually break with the academy model during the height of the military dictatorship. On June 13, 1973, during the Festa da Igreja de Santo Antônio, they founded the Roda Livre de Caxias—a street roda that continues to this day. This act was considered "sacrilege" by the pioneer mestres who valued the structured academy environment, but it created a new tradition that would produce its own generation of mestres.

Beyond Cobra Mansa, Josias trained numerous other capoeiristas who would become mestres, including Canela, Raimundo, Butt, Crispin, Irani, and Daniel Canedo. Mestre Daniel Canedo, born in 1961 in Duque de Caxias, trained at Josias's association from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s before establishing capoeira in Canavieiras, Bahia.